The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Allied campaign continues for Gaza relief via sea corridor
Efforts ramped up Friday to deliver more desperately needed aid to war-ravaged Gaza. The United States and Europe were focusing on opening a sea route, underscoring the West’s growing frustration with Israel’s conduct in the war.
A top European Union official said a charity ship will head to Gaza as a pilot operation for a new humanitarian sea corridor. Hours earlier, President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. military will set up a temporary pier on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast. Congress last week approved the U.S. military air-dropping aid into Gaza.
On Friday, five people in Gaza were killed and several injured when airdrops malfunctioned, striking people and landing on homes, Palestinian officials said. The aid efforts come as Hamas said Thursday that negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of more Israeli hostages will resume next week, dimming hopes that mediators could broker a truce before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, expected to begin at sundown Sunday.
After more than five months of war, much of Gaza is in ruins. Aid groups say Israel’s near-total blockade of Gaza and the fighting have made it nearly impossible to deliver aid in most of Gaza. Many of the estimated 300,000 people still living in northern Gaza have been reduced to eating animal fodder to survive.
Famine killing children
Children in war-ravaged Gaza are dying of hunger. Officials have been warning for months that Israel’s siege and offensive were pushing the Palestinian territory into famine. Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces and has suffered long cutoffs of food. At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration at the north’s Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals, according to the Health Ministry. Most of the dead are children.
U.N. chides Israeli settlements
The U.N. human rights office says the establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem amount to a war crime. Over 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future state. The creation and expansion of settlements amount to the transfer by Israel of its own population into territories that it occupies, “which amounts to a war crime under international law,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk’s office said in a statement. The international community, along with the Palestinians, considers settlement construction illegal or illegitimate and an obstacle to peace.